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Why are we paying top dollar, for a machine we expect of a quality to last more than five and a half years. This is a disgusting precedent for a leading edge company. It appears that if companies we have come to trust, can get away with this, we the consumer should look to buy throwaway products at a quarter the price. My Last Mac lasted almost eight and a half years. Then I was told obsolete no parts available from apple.Now I have a replacement only to learn that they have condemned this unit at the end of the Month. great confidence builder in your product.

2009 and 2011 machines are 8 and almost 7 years old, not 5 1/2. You bought good machine that still work and will do so for at least another 5-7 years OS wise. Most of the machine Apple called ” obsolete ” can run 10.12 or 10.11 at the least. Supposing it only runs 10.11, that is still 5+ more years of a new enough OS to get security updates and the newest Web Browsers. “Obsolete” means any newer OSes will not work with them as the Video cards are too old. My 2007 car is also ” obsolete ” but it runs just fine and will continue to do so. I have customers who use 2005 model G5’s for graphics printing becasue the $10k printers need the G5 and the software for it and they aren’t going to pay $20k to upgrade the whole setup just to be ” new “. It is not the end of the world.

I have a MacBook Pro 7,1 (mid 2010) hat was just startingto lag. I discovered that this is the only model from that year that supports 16 GB of RAM, so I went and put the 16 GB in it. The change is noticeable and the machine still runs great. I will be changing the HDD for a SSD and make that machine last for at least 3 more years. I’ve been using Mac since 2007 and intend to do so as the budget allows.

You will find the SSD will make a 300% difference in use. SSD’s are so much faster than the 5400 rpm drives in laptops. I buy Apple SSD’s used on Ebay so that TRIM is enabled because Apple has disabled TRIM on non Apple drive. ( I don’t like that ) You can use a non APPLE drive but you need to buy trim enabler ( google it ) in order to use the TRIM function. TRIM is important. It tells the drive it can reuse partial blocks even when other areas of the block have data that can’t be reused. ( only the unneeded area is reused ) Normal garbage collection by the drive would not wipe the partial area until the whole area was marked for deletion. That greatly affects the wear leveling ability of the SSD. SSD’s have a finite amount of data writes before the cell dies. Wear leveling allows the SSD to write to empty cells evenly and not bunch them up ( like what is done in a spinning drive ) to use up the life of the cells evenly.

OWC says you don’t need trim. I don’t buy OWC SSD’s for that reason. They may have some special firmware that tries to replicate it but I don’t how. It is a command given by the OS so not sure how the drive would know on it’s own. They appear to be good drives but i know TRIM is needed on other brands. OWC is well known for their Apple parts so I don’t know. I have 2 used Apple drive made in 2010 that I have used for 2 years and using a program called DriveDX ( free to use a few times ) it shows my drive are 91% and 95% life left after over 40k hours of ON time. Apple used SLC type Nand chips where others use MLC or Vertical 3d. The SLC is a single layer and is fast and very reliable, all the other stack cells on top of each other to give higher density at the risk of reliability as the drive gets older. ( each cell is “on” or “off” to be a zero or 1 , the higher the cells stacked the harder is it for the part that reads the cell state to be accurate. The on voltage is very small so as the cells age it is harder to determine if they are on or off several layers down )

Yes, if you buy a new video card capable of 4k. Something like a Nvidia GTX 680 2-4GB ram is what most use. Expect to spend $300 on the card if it is flashed for Apple or $150 for a Windows version.( you need the 2 power cables for Mac for it also ) If you have the GT120 in there now you can add the GTX 680 and run the 4k as a second display. A non Apple version card will not give the normal boot screen as it only gives a display once the video card drivers are loaded. If you need to choose a boot drive you can use the GT120 attached to a regular monitor and it will show the normal boot screen as it boots and then use the 4k once booted. This only applies to 2009-2012 Mac Pros running 10.10 or up OS.

What OS is on them ? The OS is the key. If you have 10.9.5 or above you can run all the newest web-browsers. OS 10.11.6 is what I run ( 10.12 is the newest OS ) and I don’t expect 10.11 to become out-dated for at least another 5-7 years. What usually outdates them is the video card in them. ( the OS needs a better card to run ) Depending on the video card ( there are 3 models available in 2009 ) you may get even more than 7 years from it.

I highly doubt you are an Apple user now based on the comment but here goes anyway…..

Every piece of hardware become obsolete at some point. Obsolete doesn’t mean unusable. I repair Macs. I myself use a early 2011 17″ quad core i7 and a 2009 Mac pro flashed to be a 2010 with a 6 core Proc and 32Gb ram. Obsolete usually means they no longer support it with parts and/or the tech is too old to run the newest OS.( usually due to video ) I can’t imagine 10.11 ( what I use ) won’t still be good for another 5 to 7 years. If you don’t like it you can go to Linux with limited support or Windows with the spyware called Win 10.
I suspect MS will make Windows a yearly fee when 2020 hits and Win 7 is no longer supported. You get to choose.

Every Manufacture and OS makes stuff obsolete. So why make the comment then ? If you think Apple is hurting you then buy something else. I work on Apple and Windows machines. Apple by far supports their stuff longer than any other company. I only do out of warranty work but even then Apple stuff is easier to get parts for. ( new old stock or just used )
2009 is 8 years old, about to be 9 years old.

The original article was misleading. It looked like apple was gonna to leave us high and dry like owners of XP. As far as leaving it is a consideration. Any apple product is 2 to 3 times more expensive than PC. My 2009 iMac had serious design issues with heat that took out the display. Apple is spying on us all the time also . If I search for something on my phone then go home on my mac the pop ups are there from the search.

XP was released in 2001 and supported until 2014. I think 13 years was long enough. There are so many things wrong with what you say I am not about to spend my time enlightening you. Google and Apple know what you search, Microsoft know everything on your computer and everything on every computer on your network. It is part of the EULA, they are not shy about it. Two very different things.

I am glad you are so much smarter than the rest of us. You did seem to not get the part of me being an apple user. I have used computers since before the TI 99. If I own a Mercedes made within the past 40 years and sometimes more I am still able to get part right from Mercedes. I consider Apple and the way they integrate hardware and software equivalent to Mercedes for computers. It is pressure from stockholders that brings the world do a wasteful and disposable exestance.

I have been doing this since the early 80’s also. I also had a TI 99-4a, Commodore 64, XT, 286 AT, and then every cpu upgrade since as I had retail stores and built and repaired them. My comment about teaching you was in ref. to the false equivalency of Apple and Google knowing about you and what MS knows if you use 8.1 or 10. Every company needs repeat sales to survive. Those 399 win computers at Walmart, they are junk and break in a year or 2. Even the 700 machines generally only last a few more years. If you buy a Dell or Lenovo business model for 1000 you will get a long lasting machine. General Win people go for the cheap not the good. It is why I closed my stores in 2000 when I only did Windows. You pay a higher cost to Apple for 1. great support, 2. good warranty, 3. good equipment, 4. the superior OS ( my opinion based on 30+ years of use of Dos/Windows and 10+ of Apple OS ) It isn’t all about specs. It was for Win machine back in the day because pre-1999, all Win machine were built very well and all lasted but all cost over 1000. When they found a way to cut corners to get cheaper, they all went down in quality as a result. Apple has its faults. I hate all the glueing they do. It makes it much harder to remove to fix. I also dislike the need for thinner on iMacs, they killed the DVD drive and put the SD slot on the back where it is harder to get to. Who cares it is 2mm thinner now ? It is a desktop !

I have 5 MACs in this category. I’ve been all MAC since the 90’s and am soon to be breaking away – Greg is right. It is people like you who keep this stuff afloat and I thank you for that. But by terminating the supply chain at a mere 5 or 7 years, Apple is demonstrating its planned obsolescence. Consider also that the newest hardware is seldom the best available, just the styling and showroom snaz are state of the art. I am finding the evil empire to be more technically appealing.

I understand your concern. Consider this, I also work on Win machines , No company I have seen so far keeps parts for more than 1 or 2 years. I have to get parts from Ebay often. Not every Win machine uses proprietary parts but many do. All the mini machines ( small form factor ) have model specific power supplies and all have model specific mother boards. Even if the main board is ATX standard it requires a new install of the os as MS doesn’t allow such a big change in hardware without a re-install and re-activation of the OS number. Every company you deal with needs you to buy again in 2-5 years to make money. Most people I deal with get 5-10 years from their machines. Apple is not cheap but you get a better OS experience and 3x the life for the extra you spend. And when it does need to be replaced, Data and Program transfer is easy compared to Windows.
I am a heavy user, I have a 2010 mac pro ( flashed 2009 model ) with a 6 core proc, and 32 Gb ram, and SSD. I also use a Quad core i7 17″ Macbook pro 2011 model. Neither will get replaced any time soon. My 2011 laptop is faster than 80% of the new Win machines sold because few Win users spend the big bucks to get a Quad 2.3 ghz i7 in their laptop. Most get i5 or i3’s due to the cheaper cost. I also have a SSD and 16Gb ram in my laptop. I can run several virtual OSes in OS X and it runs great. I don’t have to reboot for months, Windows can go maybe a week if your lucky.

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